Finding Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy (Feb 8-13, 2015)

Now the Moon’s heading out of the way, it’s worth having a look for comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy once again. The come is currently passing through the eastern part of Andromeda, heading north towards the border with Perseus and then into Cassiopeia.

The W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia is the key to finding Lovejoy at the moment. Look for the W a little over half way up the sky in the northwest around 21:00. The W will appear on its side as shown in the chart below.

Look at the line between Caph and Schedar and extend this line for 4x the distance again to locate Almach which is in Andromeda. Almach, or Gamma Andromedae, is of similar brightness to both Caph and Schedar. Once located, look above Almach for about 0.5x the Caph-Schedar distance to locate the fainter star 60 Andromedae. The head of the comet sort of completes an equilateral triangle with 60 and Almach on the night of the 8th.

Here’s what it looked like on the night of the 6th using a camera. The bright star at the bottom of the image is Almach and the fainter but still prominent one at the upper left is 60 Andromedae.